progressive involvement

You can do that?

Toronto Globe and Mail:  “We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” (Sarah Palin) said. “And I think now, isn't that ironic?”

Fighting Democrat wins GOP hearts?

Alan Grayson (D-FL)--one of the most outspoken and feisty House Democrats--is leading in the Republican primary in his district.  Granted, the poll was commissioned by his own campaign.  Still, he has 27% support on the Republican side, and the nearest challenger, out of thirteen, is at 4%.

Grayson is the one who said the GOP health care plan was "don't die," but if you do die, "die early."  He also referred to a certain lobbyist as a "K street whore." 

He gets off his zingers, which has caused a few other Congressional Democrats to look down their nose at him for not observing the--ahem!--"proper decorum" and not showing enough "grav-i-tas."  In my view, decorum is worth about 42% of the vote, which is your base, plus that miniscule contingent of the electorate for whom decorum might matter--just enough to get you beat, in other words. 

Most people like to see some spit and some fire in a politician.  As newsman, Jack Burden, told Willie Stark in "All the King's Men,"

"Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you.  Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds.

It's not surprising Grayson is popular.  The rest of the Congressional Democrats could take lessons.  Unfortunately, even though they're in the majority, they have a minority mentality.  Minority mentality is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Think like a minority, and there's a fair chance you'll become one.

 

Regarding canines and lampposts

Cong. Patrick T. McHenry (R-SC) wants to put Ronald Reagan's picture on the fifty dollar bill, and take Ulysses S. Grant off.  This should not be the least bit surprising.  In fact, I doubt there has been a Member of Congress from South Carolina in the past 150 years who didn't want Ulysses S. Grant's pic off the 50.

Back in the 1990's, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project was formed to do something similar.  Their ongoing goal is to name something after Reagan in every county in the USA of which, incidentally, there are 3067. 

These efforts always remind me of dogs marking their territory.  Plaster the Gipper's mug on something and it's like placing a brand on a spot and claiming it for conservatism--or something.

Their campaign has been a moderate success.  The biggest coup was getting Washington, D.C. to change the name of Washington National Airport to Reagan National Airport. 

Reagan was relatively unpopular when he left office.  His approval rating was in the low-40's, much higher than George W. Bush's exit-approval rating, but much lower than Bill Clinton's.  Historians at the time placed Reagan in the lower rank of American presidents.

Now that Reagan has his name stamped on an important airport, and with parkways and hot dog stands named after him all across the country, people nowadays could be forgiven for thinking that he once bestrode the nation like some kind of colossus.

Here's a suggestion for Cong. Patrick McHenry (R-SC):  Forget Ronald Reagan.  If you want to put a new mug on the 50, try this one:

 

How do Governors get World Series tickets?

Gov. David A. Paterson violated state ethics laws when he secured free tickets to the opening game of the World Series from the Yankees last fall for himself and others, the New York State Commission on Public Integrity charged on Wednesday. The accusation came as the governor, already mired in scandal, met with his cabinet and insisted he would stay in office.

That's the opening paragraph in the just-posted NY Times story about Gov. Paterson and his current troubles. 

This raises a question, however.  In many sporting events, elected officials can be seen in the crowd, and are sometimes interviewed by TV reporters.  Did they all have to buy their own tickets to the event?  How does that work exactly?

Do they camp out at the stadium until the box office opens?  No, I think we can rule that out.  Do they go to Ticketmaster and (somehow) get tickets online?  Maybe.  Does some staff member have to work some angles?  Perhaps.  Or, does somebody from the team call them and see if they want to attend?

I'm not against it, you understand.  If Kansas plays for the national basketball championship, somebody should get the Governor of Kansas a ticket so he or she can be there.  If the Nuggets make the playoffs, I'll be mightily disappointed if Gov. Hickenlooper isn't in the stands somewhere.  

What's a liberal tea-bagger to do?

I agree with the tea-baggers on some things, most notably the bank bailout.  They, and we, are right to be torqued on that one.  

Beyond that, I'd be happy to join with them to protest the increase of corporate power at the expense of the working class--the real issue our times--but while some tea-baggers can resonate to that question, it is not much promoted on Fox News or in the John Birch Society, the two parents of the tea-bagger movement.

I don't think Pres. Obama is a "socialist"--or even, for that matter, much of a liberal.  I don't think he was born in Kenya, though, to be perfectly honest, I could give a roarin' rip if he was or not.  He could have been born on Mars and I still would have voted for him over the star of Sunday morning television, John McCain.

So what's a liberal tea-bagger to do?  I can understand working class anger, and think they're right to be mad, but if the tea-baggers don't want to deal with the real causes of that anger, then they're a bunch of poseurs and can't be taken seriously.

Coffee party to the rescue!  The Coffee Party was formed partly in response to the tea-baggers, but shares at least some of the same concerns, such as, according to Kate Zernike in the New York Times, "a desire for fiscal responsibility and a frustration with Congress."  

The first line of the Coffee Party mission statement, however, brought my new-found enthusiasm up short.  They want to "give voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government."  That sounds like--gasp!--bipartisanship, which I am thoroughly against.  I want to see both sides contending for their points of view, not both sides doing an Alphonse and Gaston routine.  American government ain't kindergarten. 

That said, the motto works--expresso yourself!--and the rest of the Coffee Party mission statement seems good enough for starters:

We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

It's too soon to join up, but the Coffee Party bears watching until something even better--the Beer Party, say--comes along.

 

Random political factoid

Since 1974, the parliamentary tactic known as "reconciliation" has been used 22 times.  In 16 of those 22, the Republicans were in control of Congress.

The member from Pfizer is recognized

To watch the health care summit, go to the live feed at the Sunlight Foundation, which, very helpfully, lets you know the donors and the contribution amounts given to that particular speaker's campaign.

Pic of the Day

Is America in decline?

James Fallows is one of our best journalists and most astute observers.  He just returned from three years in China where he went to see, first hand, what China's economic emergence looked like.  See his piece in the latest Atlantic Monthly:  "How America can rise again."

America continues to have the highest standard of living in the world, but he also notes that we are "embarrasingly behind" in certain areas, such as cellphones, railroads, and health care.  Our cities are still vibrant, but are starting to seem run-down.  Remember when freeways and highways were new and smooth?  Now, potholes can swallow up a car.

“When I was growing up, these bridges and roads and dams were a source of real national pride and achievement,” Stephen Flynn, the president of the Center for National Policy in Washington, who was born in 1960, told me. “My daughter was 6 when the World Trade Center towers went down, 8 when lights went off on the East Coast, 10 when a major U.S. city drowned—I saw things built, and she’s seen them fall apart.” America is supposed to be the permanent country of the New, but a lot of it just looks old.

China's emergence on the world economic stage, says Fallows, is inevitable and not even a bad thing.  In terms of population, China is four times bigger than the United States.  If its population produced one-fourth as much as the United States, which it will, then its total economy will be larger than ours.  This is not a bad thing, but a good thing because "a business-minded China is more benign than a miserable or rebellious one."  Not only that, but China's growth means expanding markets for American business.

America has advantages that China does not have, such as an open society, for example, and great universities.  Jiao Tong University in Shanghai ranked the world's universities and concluded that 17 of the top 20 were in the United States.  The combination of an open society with great universities attracts talent from around the world.  One-fourth of the membership of the National Academy of Sciences was born outside the United States.  Even when students don't stay, they take "American contacts and styles of thought" with them when they return to their home countries. 

The American advantage here is broad and atmospheric, but it also depends on two specific policies that, in my view, are the absolute pillars of American strength: continued openness to immigration, and a continued concentration of universities that people around the world want to attend.

Our main problem, says Fallows, is that our political system is a "joke."  He notes that, in all his travels, which are considerable, nobody has ever told him that they wished they had a Senate like ours.  Fallows doesn't say this, but over the past 50 years, the number of democracies around the world has increased dramatically, but not one of them--not a single one--has modelled their democracy after ours.  They are all parliamentary systems.

The problem of the Senate is that it is undemocratic.  California has 69 times the population of Wyoming, but they both get two Senators.  41 Senators can block virtually any measure, and you can get 41 Senators from states which represent only 12% of the population.  "This converts the Senate from the 'saucer' George Washington called it, in which scalding ideas from the more temperamental House might 'cool,' into a deep freeze and a dead weight."  Sixty-eight percent of the members of the National Academy for Public Administration consider that it is more difficult to get anything done today than at any time in the past.

This governmental deadlock occurs at a time when the nation's infrastructure--everything from bridges to water systems--is crumbling.  With all due respect to private sector initiative, the internet, the Human Genome Project, and the GPS network all got their start through government programs--the Internet by the Pentagon, the Human Genome Project by the National Institutes of Health, and the GPS network by the Air Force.  Robert Atkinson, director of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, says:

“Our companies and entrepreneurs are matchless in their power to adapt.  We lead in many categories the private economy can handle by itself. But where you need any public-private coordination, we’ve become handicapped. I worry that our companies can adapt, but our system can’t.”

What can be done?  Fallows explores various options, all the way from a military coup to a constitutional convention to giving up on government altogether.  The problem is that a decaying infrastructure will eventually impinge on the private sector's ability to compete.  "I have seen enough of the world outside America to be sure that eventually a collapsing public life brings the private sector down with it." 

The conjunction of private and public abundance typified America throughout its 20th-century rise. We had the big factories and the broad sidewalks, the stately mansions and the public parks. The private economy was stronger because of the public bulwarks provided by Social Security and Medicare. California is giving the first taste of how the public-private divorce will look—and its historian, Kevin Starr, says the private economy will soon suffer if the government is not repaired. “Through the country’s history, government has had to function correctly for the private sector to flourish,” he said. “John Quincy Adams built the lighthouses and the highways. That’s not ‘socialist’ but ‘Whiggish.’ Now we need ports and highways and an educated populace.” In a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package, it should have been possible to build all those things, in a contemporary, environmentally aware counterpart to the interstate-highway plan. But it didn’t happen; we’ve spent the money, incurred the debt, and done very little to repair what most needs fixing.

None so blind as those who can't seem to spot their own hypocrisies

"I've heard at least three teleprompter jokes already. In front of a teleprompter," tweets the National Review's Kathryn Lopez from the Conservative Political Action Conference. 

Conservatives have been jumping all over Pres. Obama for weeks about his use of a teleprompter, most of them using teleprompters at the time they're doing it, as Lopez says.  Lands sakes alive, people, presidents have been using teleprompters ever since the dumb things were invented, and so has every other preening self-important politician who can afford one.

In fact, Pres. Obama can and does do quite well without one.  He's not as good as Bill Clinton perhaps, but way better than George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan, all of whom found the English sentence to be rather like the Judean wilderness--wander in and you may not find your way out again.